The zoetrope, or wheel of life, is an example
of one of the earliest forms of animation, invented by William George Horner in
1834.

It relies on the phenomenon known as persistence of vision. Once the
eye sends an image to the brain, we maintain that image for some time before it's
supplanted by the next image. So, if you see a series of still images quickly
enough, and there's a small amount of difference between each image, we perceive
that as a single moving image.

A zoetrope is also simple and simple to
make. It's just some kind of drum with an open top (an empty ice cream container
works well and it's fun to empty) and a series of images drawn on the inner surface,
alternating with slits to view the animation. It works best if there's a drawing
directly across from a slit.

Another approach is to put the drawings beneath
the slits. That way you have more slits and more drawings, but it forces you to
view the animation at an angle and is more suited for a larger zoetrope.

The
most difficult part of making a zoetrope is creating the paper strip animation,
so we've done that for you as a downloadable Adobe Acrobat PDF. You can enlarge
the drawing on your printer for a larger zoetrope.

Of course, you can just
ignore our simple zoetrope for something more sophisticated, so we encourage you
to experiment. Probably the best zoetrope you can make is that ice cream container
with the slits and drawings resting on an old record player turntable.

There are several websites with information about zoetropes and other early animation
devices, including: